


shut the door, stay with me

by alderations



Series: indigo [2]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: And hypocritical, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Execution, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Immolation, Marius is clueless, Multi, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Other, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed, Temporary Character Death, a character is burned at the stake in somewhat graphic detail (dw they get better), canon-typical mechs being horrible, the beginning is pretty graphic and then it gets softer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:48:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25846117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alderations/pseuds/alderations
Summary: Marius no longer has a crush, because Lyfrassir Edda died with the rest of the Yggdrasil system, and he's never going to see them again. Right? Right.Marius is frequently proven wrong.
Relationships: Lyfrassir Edda/Marius von Raum, polymechs
Series: indigo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1869556
Comments: 26
Kudos: 193





	shut the door, stay with me

**Author's Note:**

> CW: this starts with a fairly graphic description of a character being burned alive and shot repeatedly. Pretty typical Mechs violence, but gory. please let me know if I missed any tags!!!

Executions are probably Marius’s third favorite spectator sport, after space coliseum death-rugby and, of course, hockey. So when Jonny abruptly steers them away from the Aurora when they’re on their way off-planet, claiming that he could smell guillotine blades in the air, Marius is happy to humor him. Not that they’ve seen a single guillotine. That’s a disappointment—it’s been a while, after all—but when they catch sight of the growing flames at the center of the angry mob, Ashes perks up and starts to walk a bit faster. Immolation isn’t Marius’s method of choice, by any means, but he isn’t going to complain.

The execution is apparently not going so well, since it takes them a good twenty minutes to even push their way close enough to  _ see  _ the pyre, and the person on it is still thrashing and choking out senseless curses. Incompetent townspeople, no real surprise. The Mechs would be happy to help, but sometimes the failures of an angry mob are even more exciting then their successes. Marius lets out an  _ oof _ when the Toy Soldier jumps on his back, its wooden arms flailing with excitement now that it can see better. Next to him, Ashes is nearly vibrating. A grin splits Marius’s face as he rides on their energy, soaking in the acrid reek of burning flesh and the violent rage of the strangers around him. The voice on the pyre grows weaker until it finally chokes out under the rising pillar of smoke. A thrill shivers through Marius’s heart: the last moments are always the most exciting, watching someone struggle to cling to life, eyes wild, body flailing, helpless in the face of nothingness and—

From the center of the crowd, he hears a cough. Another one. Then, in a dreadfully familiar voice, “Let me  _ go!” _

The Mechanisms have burned enough people to know that the sentenced’s vocal cords ought to have melted by now. Ashes is frowning, flicking a lighter with one hand while they strain to see over the crowd. On Marius’s back, the Toy Soldier has gone still, apparently disappointed by the victim’s failure to die in a timely fashion. “What’s going on?” Marius hisses.

“I really hope this isn’t…”

Ashes is cut off by what sounds, for all intents and purposes, like the death throes of a burning corpse. The crowd cheers, the Toy Soldier cheers, Jonny jeers somewhere off to the left, until, within less than a minute, the person on the pyre is screaming anew.

Either this person is  _ very  _ resilient, or it’s one of them. Marius takes stock of his crew—Toy Soldier on his back, Ashes on his right and Ivy marking her place in her book and tuning into the action on his left. Jonny’s voice is still shouting nonsense beyond her. A quick glance tells Marius that Nastya and Brian are towering over Jonny, trying to keep his violence at least somewhat localized, while Tim is still pushing through the crowd, apparently in hopes of an explosion. It takes a moment to find Raphaella, hovering in the air behind them, and when he finally catches her eyes, they are stony and cold. Not one of them, then.

Still, that voice is so familiar it aches, deep under Marius’s skin.

By now, the mob has realized that fire isn’t going to get the job done, and a few of the self-appointed peacemakers up front are firing rounds at the pyre with wild abandon. Marius is intimately familiar with the sound of gunfire, but for some reason he flinches this time, nearly dropping the Toy Soldier, and it scrambles off his back to let him fight his way closer to the execution. He’s not excited anymore. Instead, his blood pulses with dread so thick that the world slows around him.

A metal elbow is a great tool to have when shoving through an angry mob, and Marius uses it to the fullest, not giving the slightest of shits when he breaks a few noses. The victim has gone quiet again, only to start their wailing anew, this time trembling with the impact of a dozen gunshots. Bile rises in Marius’s throat as he elbows a particularly tall rioter in the sacrum, crumpling them to the ground, and then his path is clear. Even with bullets whizzing past his ears and a few lodging in his back, even under threat of being shot to pieces, Marius doesn’t care what’s going on behind him. His focus has narrowed to the pyre, crackling with flames and ricocheting bullets and tendrils of iridescent shadow, weaving and rewriting flesh, as one Lyfrassir Edda wakes up again and  _ screams. _

No. That can’t be right, the Bifrost had taken them, they were—they were dead and gone long before they left the Yggdrasil system, Ivy swore, the chance was so low—

“Marius!” Raphaella is right over him now, dodging bullets from the confused mob. “Is that who it fucking looks like?!”

He tries to reply, calling on all the rationality left in his immortal mind, but all he can do is nod. Lyf is kneeling against a stake that has long since gone up in flame, wrists shackled behind their back, their dark hair alight and their skin melting as fast as it can congeal back into place. Without thinking, Marius rips a pistol from the holster on his thigh and takes out half the gunmen in a matter of seconds. Apparently, that’s all the encouragement that Jonny needs to participate, and Marius leaves him and the others to their chaos as he re-holsters the gun and surges forward toward Lyf.  _ Fuck,  _ he never wanted them dead, but this—this is worse. Not them. Lyf didn’t deserve this, it wasn’t  _ fair, _ they were supposed to be gone and even if the Bifrost had swallowed them into its horrible writhing madness it’d be better than being unkillable, like them.

The same thoughts keep circulating through Marius’s head as he rips the heat-softened chains from Lyf’s wrists with his metal arm. He barely notices the burn. Lyf stares up at him in horror, which is probably warranted given that Marius can feel his face blistering, but he just grabs them by the shoulders and drags them out of the fire, desperate for any way to put out the flames and end their pain. Gods, he’s gone soft. Before he can do anything even stupider, Raphaella lands next to him and dumps a bucket of water directly on Lyf’s burning body. Marius chokes on what can only be called a sob. At least the townspeople were prepared to stop the fire if it got out of control, though just stopping the flames doesn’t seem to put a stop to—whatever the fuck is happening to Lyf.

Their skin bubbles with rainbow sludge as it reknits, but the bullet wounds continue to bleed dark and sticky onto the dust beneath them. They’re not healing like a Mechanism; the rainbow—the Bifrost—is doing its work, but too slow to prevent them from bleeding out again, and Marius can’t stop himself from clutching their shoulders and heaving them closer to him as they choke on a dying breath and fall limp. He feels for a pulse, as if that matters, while the viscous rainbow smooths over the holes in Lyf’s skin even though Marius feels nothing. Raphaella’s wings shelter them both from the fight ongoing around them. For once, Marius is genuinely grateful for her. “They’re—fuck, Raph, do they—can they only do that a few times? Were we too fucking late? They’re not—they’re not—I—”

Raphaella rests a hand on his back to anchor him, and before she can say anything, Lyf rattles a horrible breath and comes back to life. Marius has no idea if the wetness on his face is from the burns healing on his skin, or if he’s just crying. After he spent the last two years  _ swearing  _ to his crewmates that Lyf was just a silly crush, just someone to mess with, and they might have been! They could have been, if they had died! But Jonny had wanted a fucking execution, and in minutes, Marius’s unending life turned on its head.

Confusion shines through the pain in Lyf’s newly-regrown eyes. “Von—Von Raum?” They cough up something that looks like blood mixed with engine oil. “What—you—I’m…”

Before they can dredge up a coherent phrase, their eyes roll back in their head and they faint. Not dead this time, apparently, which is a small victory that Marius will celebrate. “What the fuck do we do?” he hisses, relieved for once to hear Ashes’ footsteps approaching from behind them.

Without a word, Ashes shucks their long coat and hands it to Marius, who wraps it around Lyf’s healing form. The fabric sticks to their wounds, but Marius isn’t keen on touching the Bifrost goo, and Lyf’s clothes burned away before he even arrived. Public execution is humiliating whether one is naked or not (and Marius can attest to both). Ashes kneels next to him as Marius gathers Lyf in his arms, mentally preparing himself to be berated for catching feelings, but their voice is soft. “We take them back to the Aurora and wait for them to heal. If there’s something, something  _ else,  _ that can make a person immortal, we need to know about it.”

Raphaella nods her agreement. “Okay,” Marius sighs. “Okay. I—yeah, I’m not going to complain about that. Raph, will you help me, uh, prepare the medbay?”

“Dust it off, you mean?”

“Shut up.” He stands, disconcerted by how light Lyf feels in his grip, and takes off toward the ship. The rest of the crew has apparently started an all-out war with the executioners, so they don’t bother to ask questions when Marius marches past them with his jaw set and eyes fixed forward. Lyf starts to wriggle and whine in their sleep after a minute, but they calm back down once they board the ship.

Marius barely registers Raphaella and Ashes rushing past him to get a bed ready, nor Nastya following him onto the ship with curiosity glowing in her eyes. Even when he finally lays Lyf’s body down, he hesitates to let them go. They look better now, their skin mostly scabbed over and their face close to the stern scowl that Marius had always loved to break, but they still tremble inside Ashes’ coat while Marius frantically searches for the handful of medical supplies that he’s actually accumulated over the centuries.

“Do you need anything from my lab?” Raphaella interjects, after she’s watched Marius struggle for a few minutes.

“No. No torture devices. They probably need—they need water, and uh, food? Humans need food. Maybe, um, bandages or something, I don’t—”

Ashes snorts. “I doubt they need anything more than we would. Their hair even regrew on its own, see?”

That it did, and now it lay tangled under their head in a smoky mess. “Fuck,” he murmured. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Jonny’s gonna kill me when he gets back.”

“We’ll hold him off,” Nastya pipes up from the doorway.

“Seconded. I am… very interested to see how this situation develops,” agrees Raphaella.

Marius rolls his eyes, refusing to admit his gratitude. “Just—get out. They need to rest, and gods know we’re not any help.”

To his surprise, they all comply with only quiet grumbling, and he’s left alone with Lyf. Fuck, those are words he would’ve loved to think in any other situation. Right now, Lyf is curled into a tight ball on the one functional medbay cot, their face wrinkled with pain and streaked with soot. It takes Marius a moment to realize that his chest is aching with something that might be compassion. He’s going to have to do a  _ lot  _ of violence to force that back down. Before he can linger on the thought any more, Lyf wheezes once and jerks upright, eyes wild and hands scrabbling at the bed, until they catch sight of Marius, and their scowl deepens. “Where the fuck am I?” they hiss.

Marius follows his own advice for once and takes a deep breath. “Inspector,” he responds, “you are… on our ship. The Aurora. You’re—you’re safe, for now.”

“Not an Inspector. Anymore.” It sounds like every word is scraping Lyf’s throat raw, but they bluster on regardless. “Awfully pretty name for a pirate ship.”

It’s so unexpected that Marius can’t bite back a laugh. “You were  _ burning at the fucking stake,  _ and that’s the first thing you have to say?”

He shouldn’t have said that. Lyf’s eyes unfocus for a long second, because Marius is the worst unlicensed psychologist on this side of the galaxy. “I—I was—I’m—”

“You died.” Wow, Marius was truly horrific at shutting his mouth. “You died, like, six times. And you kept coming back, even when the  _ shackles  _ were melting, Lyf. What the fuck happened?”

Even though they were still drowning in Ashes’ coat, Marius could see Lyf’s chest heaving. He fucked up. Everyone was right, they’d always been right, he should’ve just shut his mouth for once in his lifetime and things would’ve been fine, but what was Marius von Raum if not an incurable blabbermouth? “I  _ what?” _

“Died. No pulse. No breathing. Your flesh was melting off your bones, Lyf. And then the—the rainbowy stuff—”

“The Bifrost?” Lyf’s voice was returning to its former volume, but it wavered and broke as they continued. “I thought I’d escaped. Gods, I was so stupid, how could I have…” They cut themself off with another retching cough, which left a blob of rainbow ooze on their hand. “Of course it followed me. It was always going to follow me, wasn’t it?”

Marius bit his tongue. Lyf was seconds away from panicking, but he had no idea how to stop them, not when the truth was already coming together in their mind. “We. Well. We assumed that it got you before you’d even left the system.” Their eyes snap up to meet his. “I—I wanted to get you out, Lyf. Ivy said it was too late.”

For a long moment, they search his face, even as they start to hyperventilate. “I think she was right.”

“But—but you’re alive, Lyf, you’re here—”

“On a fucking pirate ship? Held captive by my own prisoners?” Their hands quiver as they press their face into them. “I made it—I survived for two years, just trying to be a fucking person, and there was—there was an a-accident. And then they. That.”

“An accident?” Marius probably shouldn’t push, but maybe it’d help Lyf to talk about it? His degree was in robotics, not whatever the fuck was going on here.

Lyf shook their head. “I broke my arm when my ship first landed, and they  _ said  _ it healed faster than it should’ve but I thought—I thought maybe my biology was different. I didn’t notice anything. But then yesterday I f-fell, I fell out of a window f-four stories up, and my fucking skull cracked and thirty minutes later I was awake and there was B-Bifrost everywhere and so many people saw me and—and I don’t fucking blame them! I’d try to execute me too!”

Alright, so there is a  _ lot  _ to unpack there in terms of self-worth, but Marius won’t start there. “They tried to kill you for… not dying?”

“I think it had more to do with the eldritch healing tentacles,” Lyf responds. Marius ignores the way his chest flutters at their familiar deadpan.

“Well, I have, uh, good news and bad news. Good news: you’re in good company, there’s nine more of us and we won’t torture you just for being immortal. I mean, we do that to each other all the time, but it’s… different. When you’re new. The bad news is that being unkillable  _ fucking sucks.” _

They roll their eyes. “Yes, I figured that out around the fourth time I died, genius doctor. Wait—nine  _ more?  _ There are  _ twelve  _ of you?”

Marius has to think for a second, because he’s not the type to spend eternity getting better at basic math. “No, just nine. In addition to you. And Aurora herself, I guess, but she’s not a—”

He cuts off, because Lyf’s head is in between their knees. Apparently this is what’s really going to send them over the edge. “Nine. Nine of whatever the fuck von Raum is.  _ That is so many violins.” _

“Only two violins,” he corrects. “And to be fair, I am the most annoying by far.”

“Good to know.” They’re clearly crying, but Marius can pretend not to notice since their face is now buried in their arms. And he assumes they’re crying about, well, everything, not just how annoying he is (though he wouldn’t fault them for that, either). “I—I have nowhere else to go, do I? Pirate ship or planet that wants to burn me. Or Yog-Sothoth. Wonderful.”

Marius frowns. “We can drop you off anywhere else, Lyf. We may be assholes, but we won’t hold you hostage. I mean, I won’t let the others hold you hostage. Raphaella might want to—”

“No.” They look up. “I’m fucking  _ done  _ with people. Everyone—everyone on Midgard, planning my whole life ahead of me like a fucking chess piece, and when I finally get out of that hellscape no one will  _ believe  _ me and I have nothing—I have  _ nothing left,  _ Marius! The clothes on my fucking back are gone! You can’t—you can’t—”

“We won’t leave you unless you want us to!” Marius reassures, though he’s genuinely shocked to get such a reaction out of them. “I’m sorry that I—I’m sorry, Lyf. I don’t know how to help you. It’s been so long since I’ve actually tried to help a real human.”

Lyf snorts at the notion. “I don’t know what I am anymore, but it’s not that. Can I just… Do you have a—a shower somewhere? I can’t handle the fucking g-gasoline smell anymore.”

“Of course,” Marius mumbles, before grabbing a handle on the wall near himself and yanking it downward. Lyf stares at him in bewilderment. “Chemical shower. We’re generally pretty, um, relaxed about lab safety, but it still sucks to have hydrofluoric acid on your skin once you’re done playing with it.”

They get to their feet slowly and step under the spray on wobbling legs, Ashes’ coat still wrapped around their shoulders. “I’m not going to ask. Do you, um, are there… do you have any clothes that might be around my size, or…?”

“Oh!” Marius jumps, pointedly keeping his eyes away from a five-foot radius around Lyf’s soaking form. “Yeah, I’ll go—I’ll go find something. There should be towels under the operation table.  _ Clean  _ towels. I promise. Pirate’s honor.” Then he takes off toward his room, fighting the heat rising in his cheeks as he debates how to tell Ashes that their coat is definitely fucked. Though if anyone could rescue that much leather from a shower, it would be Ashes.

The medbay is, conveniently, in Marius’s wing of the ship, so he spends a long minute facedown on his bed, trying to collect himself. When you live for thousands, even millions of years, it’s so easy to forget how much can change in an instant. Lyfrassir Edda is  _ alive,  _ they’re in the same general vicinity as Marius, they’re not even trying to escape (last he checked), and they’re immortal. They’re like him. There’s a surge of emotion threatening to break past the lump in Marius’s throat, and he doesn’t want to know what will happen if he lets it out. He would never admit it out loud, but he is perhaps just as bad at understanding his own feelings as Raphaella and Ivy always insist. But he doesn’t have time to worry about that now, not with a task at hand, so he allows himself one more scream into the closest pillow and then sets off to find clothes for Lyf.

He takes his time to make sure that he won’t walk in on Lyf mid-shower—a thought he stubbornly does  _ not  _ consider any further—and by the time he gets back to the med bay, Lyf is sitting on the cot again, wrapped in a towel and braiding their hair with a fierce precision. The shower is still running, washing the last remnants of soot and rainbow sludge down the drain in the middle of the med bay. “I couldn’t figure out how to make it stop,” they admit, nodding at the switch Marius had pulled on the wall.

“Took me half an hour the first time,” Marius reassures. He finds the tiny hook in the wall and resets the lever, getting his flesh arm drenched in the process. “I found some clothes but, uh, the only person on the crew who’s close to your size is Jonny and you… don’t want to start off on his bad side, trust me. Hopefully this stuff won’t be too big.” Still keeping his eyes far from Lyf, he leaves the bundle on the end of the cot and shuffles off to the lab adjacent to the medbay, where he pretends to be busy while Lyf dresses.

When he returns, Lyf is, predictably, drowning in his clothes. They don’t look too silly with the sleeves and pant legs rolled up, but Marius’s heart still feels like a space hamster on a wheel, as if it could burst through his chest at the slightest provocation and find its way to Lyf where it apparently thinks it belongs. “Thanks,” they mumble, fiddling with the hem of their—Marius’s—shirt. They buttoned it uneven. Marius can only imagine that his face looks like a radioactive tomato right now.

“You look much better,” Marius replies, since he has never censored a single word out of his mouth in his long, miserable life. “Y’know. Melting flesh and rainbow-wise.”

“I’m so flattered,” Lyf deadpans, and then Marius feels a soft impact in the center of his chest and—oh. They’re hugging him. They must not have healed all the way yet, if their brain is addled enough to hug  _ him,  _ their eternal tormentor, the Arbiter of Violins, Doctor Baron Marius von Raum. He blinks down at them a few times to make sure he’s not imagining things, but they’re still there, hair slowly rubbing a damp patch into his shirt, and he wraps his arms around them as slowly and gently as he can manage.

They’re not a tiny person by any means, but their body feels so frail as they tremble in Marius’s arms, and he can’t resist the urge to squeeze them tighter. “Are you… quite alright?” He sounds ridiculous, but that’s fine. He’s showing he cares, just like a real human! Surely Lyf will have no room to complain.

“Fine. I mean, I’m not, but I haven’t completely lost it, if that’s what you’re really asking.”

Marius shrugs. “I mean, not to be too blunt about it, but you kind of, uh, hate my guts? Last I checked?”

“You saved me.” They pull back enough to look up at him, and their eyes are so dark and deep and sincere and Marius is  _ royally  _ fucked. “I have no one left in the  _ universe,  _ all the few people who’d gotten to know me tried to execute me, and you—don’t get me wrong, I  _ do _ hate you and you  _ do  _ drive me insane, but who knows what they would’ve done to me if you hadn’t gotten me out of there? How long they would’ve re-melted me over and over again hoping it would stick? Or what else—what other torture they would’ve tried? I spent long enough around you and la Cognizi and Alexandria to know full well how much you all care about the average human, and I know you didn’t have to do that. So yes, I hate your guts, and you are also my favorite person in the universe right now. Shut up and hold me.”

That’s far too much for Marius to process while Lyf is burying their face in his chest and holding on to him like he’s their last link to reality, so he just hugs them back, telling himself that this means nothing, they’re just overwhelmed, they’ll go back to shouting at him whenever he thinks about violins within the hour. Out of instinct, he reaches up to stroke one hand down their silky braid, only to pull back when they jump away from the touch.

Their mouth opens to say something, but before they can get a word in, the door to the medbay flies open. “Doctor! I need my finger splinted, it keeps trying to grow back wrong.” It’s Jonny, covered head to toe in viscera and mud, grinning like he’d just ripped the beating heart out of someone’s chest, which is a distinct possibility, come to think of it. “Don’t bother trying to hide your fugitive, I saw you carrying them back here. Awfully sweet of you, von Raum.”

Marius glares at him but doesn’t say anything, not willing to risk Jonny’s wrath when he’s already trying to keep himself between the murderous first mate and Lyf. “Jonny. This is—”

“Inspector Second Class Lyfrassir Edda,” Jonny interrupts in a terrifying imitation of Lyf’s own voice. “I know. And quit worrying, I’m not going to kill them. I got to murder half a planet because of them! We’re friends now.”

“I don’t believe you’ve ever had a friend before in your life,” Marius grumbles under his breath as he pulls out a popsicle stick and a roll of duct tape and sets to work re-breaking Jonny’s extremely fucked-up finger.

Lyf clears their throat. “And, uh, who are you and why do you know what I sound like so well?”

Jonny’s usual drama is even more horrifying in combination with the amount of gore on his person. “Jonny D’ville, your loyal captain—”

“First mate. And ‘loyal’ is a strong word.”

“Shut up, Marius. I  _ also  _ narrate most of our songs, including the ones we wrote about the Bifrost.” At this, Lyf looks up at Marius with a growing hint of his usual scowl. “Full disclosure, I would usually have gutted you within seconds of setting foot on our ship, but as a new immortal you get a pass. I’ve been there. We’ve all been there.”

Surprisingly sentimental for Jonny, but Marius will take it, if it means they don’t have to keep him from attempting to eat Lyf as soon as he turns his back. “I… thank you, I guess?”

“Don’t. I still despise you on principle, because von Raum has never had a crush on a tolerable person in his life, and he’s not about to start now. Regardless, I won’t kill you any time soon.”

Ignoring Marius’s loud insistence that he has  _ no idea  _ what he’s talking about, Jonny turns on his heel and marches out of the medbay before Marius can finish taping the splint to his finger. Marius certainly isn’t about to chase after him—if his finger keeps healing all fucked up, that’s his problem. “I have no idea what he’s talking about,” he repeats, quieter this time.

“You. You all wrote…  _ songs  _ about me?”

Ah. Marius is not really prepared for this conversation, but he’ll take it over anything involving his hypothetical crush. “They’re some of our best work, in my humble opinion.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t make me feel much better.” Their nostrils flare with an angry sigh. “So what, you and the others were just—hanging out in prison taking notes? Watching everything go to shit? To write  _ songs?” _

“You would’ve known this if you ever let us sing to you,” Marius mumbles.

Lyf looks like they’re about to fight, their eyes going cold with rage, but then it crumples out of them like a fading gust of wind. “You knew everything. I knew that, we all knew that, but—you let my fucking  _ world  _ end, and you turned it into music. Without even trying to help.”

“Okay, we didn’t—you saw how fast we got out of there when the train arrived! We’re immortal, sure, but we’re not  _ gods.  _ Well, except maybe Ashes, but that’s beside the point. What Odin did was far beyond our control. Would you rather all of Yggdrasil rot in obscurity than be remembered through us?”

Their chin trembles and Marius wants so badly to hold them again. “I—I was—I was about to say that you c-could’ve gotten people out. But. So could I.” Twin tear tracks raced down their cheeks. “I h-hated that world. I hated my life, and I let them all die— _ worse  _ than that—because I was a f-fucking coward, I couldn’t—”

“Hey, Lyf, no! Shh, that’s not what happened. You know that’s not what happened.” Marius finally gives into his instincts and folds Lyf back into his arms, feeling for resistance and tightening his grip when Lyf offers none. “There was nothing you could have done. It’s a miracle that you made it out, even in… this state, and you’re not giving yourself credit for how much strength it even took to do that. None of this is your fault.”

Soft sniffles echo up from where their face is once again pressed into Marius’s shirt, but they don’t respond for a long minute. “Renting a ship and running away isn’t strength.”

“I beg to differ,” Marius insists. “Choosing to stay alive, even when you knew that you’d lose everything you ever knew? That’s fucking  _ powerful.  _ It’s no wonder the Bifrost chose you as a weird immortal vessel instead of just, y’know, eating you.”

“Very comforting,” they mutter into his chest.

“Thanks, I try.”

The medbay falls into silence around them, save for the soft gurgling of the drain as it dries and the humming of machinery from the lab. Once again, Marius is painfully aware that Lyf, fucking  _ Lyfrassir Edda,  _ is hugging him of their own accord, and he stifles the urge to pet their hair again after how they reacted minutes before. Judging by the way they rub their hands up and down his back, they are a far more tactile person than he would’ve guessed. Not that there was much room for such things in prison, but they had seemed so… dignified, so unwavering. With a start, he remembers the dream that set off his miserably unrequited crush, the way their eyelashes had rested on their face, the soft sunlight on— _ fuck,  _ he can’t go down that path right now. “I should let you get some sleep,” he muses, forcing himself to pull back and hold Lyf at arm’s length.

The bags under their eyes agree with Marius, but they still frown up at him. “And how do I know that another of your crewmates won’t kill me in my sleep?”

“Well, you’ll be fine even if they do. But anyway, if Jonny doesn’t kill you, no one will. Trust me.”

“I really don’t,” they counter, but they’re smirking. Marius wants to run his thumb across their lip. He wants to taste that smile. He wants to—to go murder someone before this outrageous softness overtakes him.

“Your loss. Regardless, you can lock the door behind me when I leave. I’m going to go tell the rest of the ship what’s going on, so they stand a chance of minding their own business, while  _ you  _ rest. Okay?”

Lyf rolls their eyes at being bossed around, which is a bold choice for a former cop, but Marius is gracious enough to keep that thought to himself. For once. “And when I wake up, the experimentation begins?”

“I will lock Raphaella in her own vat of acid, if that’s what it takes to keep her away from here.”

As he leaves Lyf alone in the medbay at last, Marius feels the ship shudder and jerk beneath him as she lifts off from the planet below. He starts to turn back in case Lyf is freaked out, until he hears the lock click behind him. Alright. They know what a spaceship taking off feels like, and it’s not like they have much to miss on this planet anyway. Shaking off his ill-placed concern, Marius heads for the bridge to figure out where they’re going, and also to hopefully recruit Brian to his Not Torturing Lyf Brigade.

When Marius arrives, Brian is tinkering with what looks like the mechanical equivalent of his liver, his metal brow furrowed as he adjusts some bit of machinery with a tiny wrench. Marius makes his footsteps as loud as possible so as to keep Brian from jumping when he announces himself. “We have a guest,” he proclaims, to which Brian doesn’t look up whatsoever.

“I heard. Your paramour from Midgard?”

“They are  _ not— _ whatever. I will not let you bait me, Drumbot. I’m just here to  _ politely  _ request that you not kill them until they’ve, uh, settled in a bit.”

Brian finally looks up at that, his hair swaying in perfect ringlets around his face. At least Marius has gorgeous crewmates to distract him from Lyf. “So they’re… staying? On the Aurora?”

“They don’t exactly have anywhere else to go,” Marius grumbles. He carefully avoids any mention of the fact that their usual solution to this kind of guest is airlocking as quickly and ruthlessly as possible, unless they can be put to better use.

Another voice pipes up behind him, and Marius startles—he’s still not used to Nastya popping out of air vents on a whim, but it’s a nice thing to be surprised by, after so many years of missing her. “I think we could come to an agreement, as a crew. None of us will murder your… acquaintance.”

“Can you really speak for them, or—”

“In return,” she cuts him off, “we get to make fun of you. With extreme prejudice.”

Marius can’t hold in a whine. “That’s not  _ fair!” _

“I very much agree with Nastya,” Brian counters. “Besides, there’s enough emotional repression happening on this ship, we really don’t need you adding to the mix. And you of all people should know that,  _ Doctor.” _

That’s not wrong, but Marius will not admit it in earshot of any other living being. “Okay, fuck you. Both of you. I’m gonna—y’know what? Raph and Ivy got their fair share of mockery when we were in prison, and besides, they had fun harassing Lyf too. They’ll side with me.”

“You know that’s not true,” Nastya laughs as Marius stomps out of the room.

He finds Raphaella literally hovering in the kitchen, an unidentifiable sandwich in one hand and a book in the other, while Ivy leans over her shoulder to peek at whatever she’s reading. It’s sickeningly cute, and therefore great blackmail material for when they inevitably turn against Marius. “How’s the Inspector?” Ivy asks before he can open his mouth.

“Sleeping. They’re… I think they’re in shock.”

“Yes, immolation tends to have that effect on people,” Raphaella replies. “And I’m sure they were just  _ delighted  _ to see you.”

Marius shakes his head. “They, uh. They hugged me. Twice.”

Apparently this is more interesting than whatever they’re reading, because Ivy and Raphaella both snap their heads up to stare at him in unison. “That is an unprecedented turn of events,” says Ivy. Helpfully.

“Mhm. Okay, don’t look at me like that, I’m just here to make sure you two don’t plan on murdering them. Please?”

They appear to be having some kind of telepathic conversation, which they  _ probably  _ can’t do, but they’ve surprised Marius before. “Psychology isn’t my realm of expertise,” Raphaella says after a moment, “but I  _ would  _ like to know how this situation develops.”

“Wait, so you’re—you’re not even gonna make fun of me?”

Ivy laughs, a rare and gentle sound. “She didn’t say  _ that. _ You do need ample encouragement, after all.”

Once again, Marius resigns himself to losing this argument and turns to leave, only to come face to face with a stock-still Toy Soldier. “Fuck!”

“I Would Rather Not, But Thank You For The Offer!”

Marius scowls. “What do you want?” He doesn’t usually mind the Soldier as much as certain other crew members, but he  _ also _ doesn’t love being ambushed by a fucking mannequin.

It beams up at him, at least as much as its smile is capable of widening. “I Heard That You Have A New Friend, And I Would Like To Make Their Acquaintance!”

That seems harmless enough. Well, knowing the Toy Soldier, it’ll probably produce a live frog from the inside of its mouth or something like that during the interaction, but Lyf’s seen weirder. “They’re resting right now, but you can meet them later. As long as you promise not to kill or maim them.”

“I Will Not Kill Or Maim Anyone If I Get To Be Involved!”

Things are always so simple with the Toy Soldier, which Marius can appreciate. “Great. You can—okay, it’s done with this conversation.” It struts over to the pantry while he’s still mid-sentence, where it sets about reading off the ingredients of every package out loud, then sorting them alphabetically by flavor. Marius has long since learned not to ask it too many questions. He’s about done dealing with the rest of the Mechanisms; Ashes already knows what’s going on, and he figures Tim is probably in the same boat as Jonny regarding post-violence euphoria.

For the time being, Marius heads back to his room, where he has plenty of emotions to suppress and pillows to scream into.

When Marius wakes up again, after a nap of indeterminate length, the door to the medbay is open and Lyf is gone. This could mean several things: they were kidnapped and eaten by octokittens and/or Jonny; they decided to make a run for it and most likely airlocked themself; or they just got bored and started wandering the ship, which  _ seems  _ most plausible, but Marius has seen octokittens break through stronger doors in the past. After checking the cabinets and under the beds to be sure that Lyf isn’t just hiding, he takes off to find them before anything can go  _ too  _ horribly wrong. He brought Lyf onto the ship, and therefore Lyf is his responsibility, even if they’d resent being treated as such, and  _ therefore _ it’s up to him to make sure they’re not being used for target practice, which is not something the Mechanisms ever  _ do  _ but just in case—

His train of thought is cut off by a soft laugh echoing down the corridor, apparently coming from the Game Room (which is more accurately the Room Where Jonny and Ashes Cheat At Every Game Known To Man Or Immortal and Kill Each Other About It). Before he even realizes who’s laughing, something in Marius’s cold, murderous chest melts. He takes a long moment to breathe deeply and steel himself for whatever he’s going to find before he bursts into the room.

The situation inside is better than he feared regarding the general aliveness of all parties involved, but Marius isn’t any less befuddled when he realizes that Lyfrassir Edda is playing poker against Ashes and… winning. Ashes is cheating, as always, and Lyf isn’t calling them out on it, but they’re either incredibly lucky or cheating with so much finesse that even Ashes doesn’t notice. Normally, this kind of behavior would lead Ashes to set someone on fire, but they look almost awed, taking in every new hand with a disbelieving shake of their head until Lyf makes their final play and leaves Ashes, for once, destitute. “What  _ are  _ you?” Ashes hisses, dropping their cards in bewilderment.

“A detective? Nonbinary? I’m not sure what you’re asking.” Lyf is clearly fucking with them, and Marius ignores the weird cardiac reaction he’s having to the sight.

Ashes blows their hair out of their face and crosses their arms. “Sass. Alright, I get what von Raum sees in you. Oh, speak of the devil!” They smirk up at Marius as Lyf turns in their chair, eyes narrowed and calculating. “Come to rescue your damsel in distress?”

“I—they’re not—I trust you not to set them on fire for the time being,” Marius strains.

“I was talking about myself. They’re kicking my ass.”

He laughs at that, pointedly ignoring the way Lyf studies his facial expression. “Frankly, I was more concerned that they’d been dragged off and eaten by octokittens. Or Jonny.”

“Octo… kittens?” Lyf interjects. As if on cue, one of the aforementioned beasts drips out of an air vent, its tentacles examining one of the poker chips in Ashes’ meager pile, while Lyf looks on with something between horror and amazement. “Are you  _ sure  _ that thing didn’t come out of the Bifrost?”

Marius snorts. “Nope, they’ve been infesting the Aurora since… I don’t know when, honestly. But long before we got anywhere near the Yggdrasil system, so far as your linear human timescale goes.”

“So condescending,” Ashes muses.

“Yes, he’s unbearable.” Lyf’s deadpan glare is back, which is a welcome relief after their distress the night before, even though it means they’re going to make Marius’s life hell at every given opportunity. “I’ve already met half the crew, if that’s why you’re so tense. Or do you just get cranky if you go more than twelve hours without annoying me?”

Something halfway between frustration and, regrettably, affection swells in Marius’s throat. “Did I seriously sleep for twelve hours?”

“You  _ did  _ throw yourself halfway into a bonfire yesterday,” Ashes reminds him. “And you actually pretended to be a doctor for once. That’s got to wear on your remaining brain cells.”

If Lyf weren’t sitting between them, he would shoot Ashes in a heartbeat. Instead, he ignores the heat rising in his cheeks and storms off in the direction of the kitchen, because he’s hungry and if Ashes is indisposed he won’t have to dodge too many fireballs in the time it takes to cook something.

He doesn’t see much of Lyf over the next few days, in part because they’re their own person and deserve to wander the ship without Marius hovering after them all the time, but mostly because he’d rather avoid constant mockery at the hands of his crewmates. Not that avoiding Lyf helps much, but he only shoots Jonny twice in a week, and he considers that a small miracle. The first time was only because Jonny ate the last of the space Nutella. So only one murder to defend his honor as a cold and heartless pirate, which meant that no one had the right to question him in the first place, obviously.

Ivy and Raphaella are suspiciously quiet about the whole situation, given that they’d made a small career out of mocking Marius back on Midgard, but he won’t look a gift horse in the mandibles. Even if he suspects that Raphaella is trying to earn his favor so that she can get away with experimenting on Lyf. These are the fears that are cycling in his head with increasing fervor when, on the sixth day after Lyf came on board, Marius doesn’t see them at all. After checking every common space and a decent number of supply closets and auxiliary engine rooms, he sets off to find the Toy Soldier, since it will at least be honest if he can order it with enough energy.

“Soldier. Where’s Lyf?” he questions, once he stumbles across it making tea out of something that might have once been hair. “Tell me if you’ve seen them.”

It smiles up at him, brandishing its teapot like a threat. “I Have Not! Have You Checked The Medbay? They Do In Fact Live There!”

Marius sighs through his nose, because, no, he  _ hasn’t  _ checked the medbay, but he wants to at least maintain an air of respecting their privacy. Or their right to not be irritated by him every waking hour of the day. Then again, he’s putting far too much effort into being halfway decent to live with, and that just won’t do. “I’ll look, thanks. Don’t tell anyone I asked you.”

“I Will Not! Unless They Order Me More Enthusiastically!”

“At least you’re honest.” Marius pats it on the shoulder, declines its offer of startlingly purple tea, and heads back toward the medbay in an increasingly sour mood.

When he gets there, Lyf is asleep. That’s not too surprising, given that their sleep schedule is still adjusting to deep space, and it is, of course, one of the few places where the Mechanisms will generally leave them be. What  _ is  _ unusual is the fact that Marius notices a puddle of shimmering rainbow muck leaking out from under the door before he even approaches it. His mild irritation falls out from underneath him, dunking him directly into fear, and he kicks the door open without a second thought.

Lyf is curled up in bed, which seems better than being unconscious on the floor or floating through the air, but the floor between them and Marius is covered in a slowly oozing tide of rainbow that sticks to Marius’s boots as he tiptoes through it toward its source. Nothing seems to be  _ wrong  _ with Lyf physically—no wounds, no weeping sores, nothing that would emit uncontrolled waves of eldritch goop, and yet the substance leaks out from under them like a pool of blood. Marius steps around the cot so that he can see their face. Their eyes are screwed shut, face pulled together in an exaggerated scowl, and their lips move like they’re reciting an incantation that won’t stop ripping itself from their throat, even as they shake their head and tremble in their sleep. As Marius watches, they claw at their own face with their fingers, as if desperate to rip off a mask that isn’t there. The stark lines left behind by their nails startle Marius into motion, and he reaches out from an arm’s length away to shake their shoulder. They twitch away from the touch, but don’t wake up.

“Lyf.” Still nothing. “Lyfrassir. Please wake up, I don’t want to have to pull out a violin on you, but I  _ will.  _ You’re safe, it’s okay, just—”

Their eyes snap open when he grabs their shoulder again and shakes them harder, and the way they stare around in wild terror tells Marius that they have no idea where they are. “Hey, it’s okay, hold on—you’re—”

“Where am I?” they snap, pulling back from his touch and sitting up. “Who… von Raum. Okay. Yes.”

“You’re on the Aurora,” Marius reminds them. “In the medbay. And you’re safe.”

For a minute, they don’t seem to have heard him, too busy staring into the puddle of iridescence that’s slowly trickling toward the drain. But they’re not emitting any  _ new  _ rainbow, and that has to be good, right? “Safe,” they finally repeat, hands clutching their knees.

“Yeah. I think you were having a nightmare? But it’s alright. Whatever it was, it’s not here.”

They slowly lift their face to stare up at him, and their desolate gaze makes Marius feel things he can’t remember the names for. “‘M sorry, Marius, but the Bifrost is here. It’s wherever I am. You know that.”

Marius frowns, because he  _ does  _ know that, but Lyf seems to believe that he’s somehow perturbed by it. The Mechanisms have seen far worse than some rainbow slime. “I’m okay with that as long as  _ you’re  _ okay.”

“I’m really not,” they mumble.

Their voice cracks on the last word, wavering and thick with fear. Marius is feeling a capital-E Emotion and he hates it, but he also has no impulse control and isn’t about to develop any now, so he sits down on the edge of the cot, giving Lyf plenty of room to get away from him if they want to. Hopefully the rainbow will wash out of his pants okay. “Can I help?”

Lyf surprises him once again by pitching forward and faceplanting in his shoulder before he has the time to open his arms. “I don’t know. I don’t know if—I think it’s too late. I’m—I’m—”

“It’s not,” Marius reassures them. “We won’t let it have you. The crew is awfully fond of you, y’know.”

This gets a wet but robotic laugh out of them. “Doesn’t matter if I’m just gonna turn into a s-squamous monster and f-fuck up the whole universe. Nothing escapes. You’re all gonna be part of it because of me, ‘cause I couldn’t mind my own business and die with the rest of my stupid world. And hugging me is probably going to make it happen faster!”

“Don’t care.” He gives them a light squeeze, since they’re only leaning farther into his chest, and they respond with a gentle sob. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but we’ve been alive for a  _ very  _ long time. Being absorbed by an eldritch god would add some spice to our lives.”

They shake their head, even while their arms wind under Marius’s and grab onto his waist, pulling him closer. If they weren’t so cuddly, maybe Marius could ignore… everything. Instead, their tears soak through his shirt and their fists tremble against the small of his back, and Marius has to physically restrain himself from pulling them into his lap. “Why are you so stubborn,” they grumble.

“Who would I be if not that?”

“Fair.” Marius can feel their nose tracing the line of his sternum while he rests his chin on top of their head. A thought flits close to his head, something dangerous and unspeakable, and he bats it away. “I might… I might just let you be stubborn. Even if it gets you eaten by Yog-Sothoth.”

Marius smiles. “I’m okay with that.”

He stays there until they fall asleep, drooling onto his shirt and slouching against him, before gently lowering them back onto their pillow and pulling the covers up around their shoulders. Most of the rainbow has already dissipated, leaving the floor surprisingly spotless. Maybe it has evil cleaning powers? That would be one experiment that he might actually let Raphaella run, if Lyf starts oozing again. As he leaves the room, keeping his footsteps as soft as possible, Marius makes a valiant effort to ignore the downright domestic feelings stirring in him after literally tucking Lyf into bed. And he succeeds, mostly, until he turns back in the doorway to watch them curl deeper under the blankets.

_ You’re in love, _ says the Dangerous Thought, completing its orbit around his brain.  _ You are so in love with them. _

Marius shakes his head until he’s dizzy and goes to find a friend, octokitten, or inanimate object to destroy.

What Marius failed to notice, in his quest to give Lyf some personal space, is that their nightmares are a near-constant issue. Now that he’s aware of them, he can see their traces in every little interaction—the bags under Lyf’s eyes, the sloppy strands of hair falling out of their day-old braid, the way they flinch and retreat into themself when Jonny and Tim start arguing a bit too loud over breakfast one morning. He knows what’s wrong, but he’s also selfishly determined to keep his distance, because what started as a weird crush is rapidly transforming into an emotion that Marius would like to avoid at all costs. At the same time, he can’t bring himself to be  _ mean  _ to Lyf, not when the occasional witty joke or well-timed Midgardian reference earns him a raised eyebrow and a gorgeous smirk. He only whips out a violin in front of them a few times, and usually because someone else started playing music first. Once, after a few shots of whiskey and an extended rendition of Hellfire, they even admit that they’re starting to respect the violin, only when compared to Jonny’s harmonica.

Marius can work with that.

By the time Lyf has been on the ship for a month, Marius knows that their nightmares aren’t getting any better. They’ve gotten clumsy in ways that are dangerous, given the number of lethal weapons always within reach on the Aurora, and this clearly distresses them, enough that Marius makes up a bullshit excuse to do some “work” in the medbay lab late into the night just so that he can keep an eye on them. If they’re bothered by his presence, they don’t say anything, until he finally gets up around midnight (in arbitrary ship time) to head back to his own room.

“Marius,” they croak when he emerges from the lab, nearly making him jump out of his skin. He’d thought they were asleep. “Will you… um, will you stay here? Just for a bit?”

Marius’s heart thumps like there’s a spider trapped in it. “Sure,” he replies, slowly sitting down on the cot across from Lyf’s. It’s covered in boxes of random medical supplies, but he doesn’t plan to sleep in here anyway. “Any reason? Are you okay?”

“Don’t wanna be alone.”

“Well, yeah, I figured that much,” Marius mutters.

Lyf presses their lips together and sighs at him, but doesn’t say anything else. And he won’t complain about an excuse to spend more time with them, especially not when they’re curled up in their pajamas—an old set of his, because he is a masochist—and staring at him with deep brown eyes clouded from fatigue. Marius just pulls a random medical journal out of one of the boxes and pretends to read it, like a doctor would, until he hears Lyf’s breathing slow and soften into the rhythm of sleep. At that point he’s actually sucked into the journal, because he found a paper about the potential sentience of robotic appendages, so he doesn’t leave when Lyf falls asleep. And when, three hours later, they jerk upright with a shuddering gasp from another nightmare, Marius is there to gather them in his arms and lull them back to sleep.

That’s how he ends up spending his nights on the second cot in the medbay, where he pushes most of the boxes onto the floor and tries very hard not to think about how easy it would be to reach across the gap and hold Lyf’s hand while they sleep. He doesn’t get as much rest, given that he wakes up with his fingers dangling in a puddle of rainbow goo on a regular basis, but why should an immortal pirate need sleep? Being a good friend is far more important. Maybe Lyf wouldn’t admit it in so many words, but Marius has never had someone cry into his chest three nights a row and then  _ deny  _ being his friend. Well, Marius has never had someone cry into his chest three nights a row in general, but that has more to do with his own character than anything Lyf can claim.

Once or twice, he catches himself nearly falling asleep in their bed, before they’ve drifted off enough for him to flee back across the divide and into his own cot. The feeling in his chest when he jerks back into wakefulness, head on Lyf’s pillow and face smothered in their hair, is so jarring that he nearly sprints out of the medbay in his desperation.

Brian finds him sitting on the bridge, knees pulled up in the pilot’s chair and eyes fixed on the stars whizzing past them outside. “I thought things were getting a bit bumpy,” the pilot laughs.

“I didn’t touch anything,” grumbles Marius.

“Sure.” Brian strolls around the chair and leans against the control panel, arms crossed, broad metal shoulders blocking most of Marius’s view. “What’s wrong?”

Marius scowls automatically, and then curses himself for feeling emotions twice in one night. “You’re no more the ship psychologist than I am.”

“I never claimed to be. But if you didn’t want to talk to someone, why are you here?”

He has a point. Marius scrubs a hand down his face and groans up at the ceiling, only for the Aurora to creak menacingly back at him. “I have had some… thoughts. And feelings.”

“Those tend to be part of the human experience. Or the inhuman one, as it were,” Brian counters. Gods, he’s sassy for a fucking robot that can’t lie. Marius assumes that he’s on MJE, or else he would’ve been meaner by now. “Regarding anything in particular? Or any _ one?” _

Marius glares up at him as flatly as he can manage. “There’s nothing I can do to make you have some fucking tact about this, is there?”

“I find myself to be quite tactful.”

A week ago, Marius would’ve shot him, and the thought of that change scares him almost as much as his feelings about Lyf. He’s desperate enough to forgo violence, and for what, a former cop who wants nothing to do with him unless it’s the middle of the night? And not even in a sexual way. “Fine. I have had some—thoughts in my mind, some  _ concepts, _ if you will, because I’ve been spending the night in the medbay—not like that, put your eyebrows back where they belong—and I just. I think. Perhaps. In my professional purview. I have some, uh, strong opinions about Lyfrassir, and I don’t know how they would feel about those. Opinions.”

Brian cocks his head to one side, letting his hair cascade down past his shoulder. “You are madly in love with them, hm?”

“I wouldn’t go  _ that  _ far—yes, fine! Stop looking at me like that!”

Admitting as much hurts, and Marius can’t tell if it’s because there’s no way Lyf feels the same, or because all of his emotional processing centers have essentially mummified after centuries of disuse. “And you’re afraid to do anything about it?” Brian asks.

“Are you kidding me?” Marius sits up straighter in the chair, while Brian reaches one hand out to steady him with a gentle hold on his shoulder. “They hate me. And, like, that’s  _ fair,  _ but generally one does not attempt to put the moves on another person if that person has expressed literally zero positive emotions toward them.”

Brian frowns, studying Marius’s face as if his robot eyes will tell him something that Marius doesn’t already know. “I’ve watched you interact with them quite a bit, and ‘hate’ is not how I would describe their actions. They actually seem rather fond of you, as much as anyone is capable of being.”

“Thanks, Bri. That really boosts my self-esteem.” Marius crosses his arms over his chest and flops back into the pilot’s chair. “They’ve told me they hate me, though. Several times.”

“So has Jonny. So has Raphaella. So have I, and I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I can only say that half the time. Because the truth is that we  _ also  _ love you, because humans are allowed to have complex emotions, especially when they’re dealing with a small apocalypse in their head every night.”

That’s a lot of honesty for Marius to handle at the moment, so he stares down at the floor to avoid Brian’s gaze, only to find an octokitten staring at him from under the control panel with unrestrained hunger. “Fuck, what is that doing in here? We’re having a serious conversation. Shoo.”

The octokitten does not shoo. Brian picks it up and lets it settle onto his hat, while Marius picks something that might be Tim’s blood out from under his nails. “I’m just saying, you should give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Not too much! Just when it comes to Lyf.”

“I still don’t believe you,” Marius grumbles, staunchly ignoring the way his heart flutters just because Brian is encouraging him.

“You don’t have to. My work here is done.” With that, Brian takes his new passenger and leaves the bridge, where Marius stays until the ship’s lights brighten into artificial daytime and his hunger drives him into the kitchen.

For the next few days, he keeps a closer eye on Lyf, as much as he can without just staring at them all the time. Their behavior continues to suggest that they find him wildly irritating, but there’s more, sometimes hidden under the surface and sometimes easier to read than Marius had realized. When they team up to kick the Toy Soldier’s ass at electric whiskey pong, Lyf throws a celebratory hug around their neck and nearly whips him in the face with their braid. The next morning, sleepy and hungover, they stand with their shoulder pressed into his as Marius waits for the coffee machine to brew in front of him. They even explain, apparently unprompted, that touching someone’s hair is intimate at best and inappropriate at worst in Yggdrasil culture. “I—I thought you knew since you spent so long there, but I guess it wouldn’t come up in prison,” they continue. “I just… I feel bad when you touch my hair and I jump, but it’s just weird to me. It’s something to get used to.”

Marius furrows his brow. “Why would I keep doing that if I knew you weren’t comfortable with it? I haven’t exactly been doing it on purpose, but I can sure as hell make an effort. What kind of space pirate do you take me for?”

Instead of responding, Lyf just stares at him for a long minute, their eyes apparently reading something in his face that he himself can’t identify.

The next night, Lyf stays up later than him for once, reading one of his more obscure medical journals with actual interest while Marius sulks under a pile of blankets and denial. When his traitorous brain finally lets him sleep, he dreams, because he can never really rest in his wretched existence. It starts off familiar enough—he’s playing a show, violin in one hand and microphone in the other, screaming something about Thor’s rage, and then his feet slide out from underneath him and suddenly he’s on an operating table, losing blood fast and sanity faster as a stony face looks down at him and cold hands pick his arm apart and put something so horrible and so angry in its place, and he’s screaming and begging her to let him rest because it  _ hurts _ but she says he can’t, he can’t stop now, he can  _ never  _ stop now, not when he’s one of them, and Marius sobs through lungs that should be dead and wishes that _ he _ had died with Byron von Raum.

Moments later, he feels cool lips on his forehead, and he wakes with a shaky gasp. “C-Ca—who’s…” His voice fades into confusion as a hand nudges him back into his pillow. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me,” Lyf soothes. In the morning, Marius will think about how fast the tension leaks from his limbs at the sound of that voice. In the morning, Marius will think about a lot of things. “You were having a nightmare.”

“Lyf,” he responds, too tired to form a sentence. “You… did I wake you?”

They snort. “I was up reading. Are you okay?”

“Am now,” Marius murmurs.

If the room were brighter, he might be able to see the flush on their cheeks. “Do you want to… talk about it?”

“Not remotely.”

Lyf shakes their head, but there’s no disapproval in their eyes. “Fair enough. I’ll stay with you if you want, otherwise I can go back to my bed. Whatever helps you.”

Apparently all of Marius’s remaining self-control was eaten up by the nightmare, because he grabs Lyf’s sleeve and tugs until they fall onto their side next to him. “Stay. I like having you here.”

“Okay,” they reply, barely above a whisper.

Marius rolls back toward the wall and closes his eyes, content to just feel Lyf’s hip pressed against his back and hear their breathing warm and defiant against the darkness. After a few minutes, though, they shift, turning toward him and wrapping an arm around his waist. Their legs wriggle closer to his, which would tickle if Marius were awake enough to feel it. “Is this okay?” they whisper, inches from his ear. He can feel their hair spilling over his shoulder and brushing his neck.

“Absolutely,” he sighs. He probably sounds ridiculous, but Lyf gives no indication, just burying their face in the back of his neck and settling in. Marius falls back asleep before he can think too hard about their hand clutched in his shirt.

The daytime lights wake him up again, to find that they’ve shifted in their sleep—Marius is on his back, which means he was  _ absolutely  _ snoring, while Lyf is curled around his side with their head pillowed on his chest. It’s uncomfortably hot under the blankets and Lyf’s hair is loose, tickling Marius’s nose persistently until he turns as far away from them as he can and sneezes.

Lyf wakes up at that, because of course they do. “Wha’s happen?” they slur, barely lifting their face off of Marius’s chest.

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.” Marius mentally kicks himself for sounding so  _ soft,  _ but he doesn’t want them to move, doesn’t want them to  _ leave.  _ “You look so comfy.”

“I am,” Lyf sighs with a tender smile. “‘N I’m awake now. So you can… deal with it.”

Marius fights down a grin and fails, watching as Lyf’s face mirrors his own. They don’t smile much, but when they do it’s a defiant and toothy thing that makes Marius feel like his heart is laid bare between them. “Oh? And what, pray tell, do I have to deal with?”

“This.” And Lyf props themself up on their elbows, leans forward, and kisses Marius with a softness that he honestly can’t remember feeling before, a softness he doesn’t  _ deserve.  _ He’s so shocked that his eyes and mouth are still wide open when Lyf pulls back. “I—oh. Shit. Did I, uh, misread the situation? I’m so sorry, I thought you wanted—”

Before they can apologize further, Marius’s brain catches up to the rest of him, and he rolls Lyf over onto their back and brackets them in with his forearms so that he can lean down and kiss them over and over again. “Don’t. Fucking. Apologize,” he responds, punctuated with kisses. “You broke my brain for a second there. But yes. I do want.”

They’re downright giggling now as their hands clutch Marius’s waist and pull his full weight down onto them. “Good,” they hum into his lips. “Good. Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> if I drew inspiration for the beginning of this from Tigerstar's death. I don't do that because I did. No I didn't <3
> 
> anyway... I wrote this in like 3 days in a wild gay fugue state and I need other people to see it. I think that my Edgy Dark Bullshit gland gets clogged if I don't express it every once in a while, and then I can't write at all, so this is the result of like... several years of buildup and then the outpouring of Sickening Fluff that came after I got rid of the dark stuff. I'm so sorry for the mental images there. Also I know that the pacing of this "slow" burn is whack, and that Fire Doesn't Work Like That, but my research was getting concerning so I decided to give it a rest.
> 
> Please leave a comment if you're comfortable doing so - especially if I missed a tag/CW! I love hearing from you all and it makes my week every time. There will be a third, smuttier installation to this series, so keep your eyes peeled if that's your thing.
> 
> Title is from Crushed Out on Soda Beach by the scary jokes which you should go listen to because it hits me in the face like a freight train every time and it's a good song to Feel One (1) Emotion To. Come find me on tumblr @alderations or twitter @alderwrites!!


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